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This article is by Jabeen Yusuf, director of strategy at Traction, a San Francisco-based advertising agency.

(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

Every brand on the planet has implemented a formal content marketing initiative or is in the midst of doing so. With digital media, brands nowadays have literally hundreds of thousands of options for content-based engagement.

But are these brands really getting the most value they can from their content marketing investments?

What typically occurs every time a new digital marketing discipline emerges is that marketers and their agencies are quick to create another bucket or silo. In effect, they resort to the knee-jerk reaction of looking at content creation through a similar filter as search, display and video. As a result, brands are myopically applying the tried-and-true “media plan-first” communications planning model to their content marketing.

Instead of starting with the question, “what are all the things our consumers want to hear from us?” they are starting with “what do we want to say to our consumers in this YouTube video?” The result is silo-driven content creation that doesn’t necessarily align with customer needs and desires. It’s business as usual.

As we’ve seen with the likes of Red Bull, however, there are bold brands that are getting phenomenal results by putting the consumer first in its content marketing. When skydiver Felix Baumgartner hurtled to the earth in a successful parachute jump from the edge of space last year, it revealed in the most dramatic way where the literal and figurative boundaries of branded content could be drawn. Red Bull was the perfect risk-taking partner for an endeavor that transcended publicity stunt to stunning marriage between like-minded entities.

The Red Bull Stratos would never have even been on the table, let alone come to fruition, if Red Bull was operating under the traditional, silo-first paradigm.

This case study should be held up by the entire agency community as a gold standard in content marketing. So how can agencies convince their clients to eschew the limitations of silo-ization? Show them the numbers. While relentless, ongoing conversations about success stories like Red Bull Stratos can and should be a part of the evangelizing, at the end of the day what will really swing skittish advertisers along is if you can show how a holistic content creation approach can actually deliver on their KPIs.

For example, to celebrate Oreo's 100th anniversary, the brand created 100 pieces of shareable content called the Oreo Daily Twist for the 34 million people who "like" them on . Why was it shareable? Clever name aside, each piece of content was an image that celebrated things that Oreo fans might care to celebrate from Parent's Day to National Cheesecake Day to the start of ComicCon. One post showing an Oreo with layers of filling in the colors of a rainbow celebrating Gay Pride became a cultural icon as 23,000 people commented on it in under 24 hours. Hundreds of thousands of people liked and shared individual Facebook posts, but the driver was the content, not where it was distributed. This 100-day experiment worked so well it influenced how they do content overall.

As new tools and analytics models emerge, so does the ability for agencies and brands to slice and dice data for a more nuanced view of performance, which can ultimately make it easier to plan and get buy-in for content creation projects. The good news is that it’s definitely getting easier to have these conversations with clients because they themselves are getting educated on the same track as agencies.

So how can marketers begin on a “content-first” initiative? Find the one area where you can test this new inverted approach. The first step is to find the story that will connect with people. Start seeding ideas in your company blogs to see what resonates. Social media is another area where brands can test conversations that spark engagement from the community. If you have a Pinterest presence, curate pins to see what content drives repins. Use these channels as tests and don’t worry about making the execution perfect. People are not going to be judgmental of the execution if they like the story you’re telling. And if you find a story that clicks with your audience, start building more content to support that brand story. You can think of a million ways to tell and retell it to the world.